Here we are in week 12 of our amazing journey to parenthood. What an amazing ride it has been so far and I’m really enjoying sharing pieces of the journey through my blog. We are still working on creating a new dedicated blog site for these musings within my new dedicated website. For now, what I’m calling these Fatherhood at Fifty posts will continue to nestle in nicely here on Jimswhimz.

For this week’s entry I am going to share a little story I just wrote. As many of you know, I love to write and tell stories. Over the last few years I’ve created dozens if not even a hundred stories for storytelling shows, Moth competitions, Toastmasters speeches and other events and writing projects. This past week I was scheduled to give a speech at my Toastmasters of Lincoln Park club. I had yet to write anything for the speech so I started to think that it would be nice to do something about the impending arrival of our first child.

I thought about doing an Icebreaker 2.0 sort of speech where I just talked a bit about my life and how I’ve gotten to where I’m at now. I also toyed around with the idea of doing something from the humorous speaking manual and writing a parody about the days leading up to us finding out that we were pregnant. Then I picked up my Storytelling manual and realized that my next project in that manual was project #4 – The Touching Story. Boom! I knew exactly what I wanted to do for the speech.

I would write a Dr. Suess-like short story that summarized the 50-ish years of my life and how I’ve gotten to where I’m at now – all in about 1000 words so I could deliver it in seven minutes. Yikes! I’d read it like a story would be read in an episode of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood – cardigan sweater and all. Holy Moly! If I did it all well my hope was that it would be one part theater, one part humor and one part touching story.

I’m glad to say that I had a ton of fun putting it all together and even more fun delivering the speech. I’d love to hear what you think about my little story. Once upon a time I would have never had the courage to share it, but like every good Hero’s journey, our awakenings inspire us to change and grow…

THE LONELY SOUL

“One upon a time there was a lonely soul…..

And the lonely soul wandered through time and space through the ENTIRE Universe wondering what it would be like to have soulmates…or tribe members…or anything at all to make the lonely soul less solitary and so alone…

And then one day that lonely soul happened by our planet earth and noticed it for its unique beauty and for all the possibilities….

The lonely soul stopped and wondered and thought about what it might be like to stay for a while and see what life on this planet earth might be like?

And just like all thoughts….the lonely soul’s thought became energy… and that energy put in motion all the possibilities of how this lonely soul might carve out a lifetime in time and space on this fabulous planet earth….

And with that thought in motion all the Angels and Gods and other Souls in the Universe began to act…

An infinite number of possibilities began to present themselves to this lonely soul. Billions of choices of free will and destiny in an single instant in time began to take shape…

And then suddenly the lonely soul had chosen it’s next story…and that story would become a little boy human born to this planet earth on July 11th, 1964….

And that little boy human was me…

And low and behold the lonely soul that became the little boy human was not so lonely any more. He had not only selected the finest possible parents he could have ever hoped for, but they had also selected him. And the little boy human’s parents praised him and raised him and loved him for all the years as he grew stronger and older and more experienced in life….

Until one day it was time for that little boy human to go off on his own and blaze his own trail and see what this planet Earth had to offer. Now little did he know at the time that there would be SO much more to learn and SO much more fear and SO much self-doubt and SO much more loneliness left on the path…but walk the path he did.

The now bigger boy human grew into a young man and left his parents and his dog named Snoopy and went to college at a University in a place on planet earth called Michigan, where he eventually met his first ever new soul partner who would later become his wife and share his life for many years to come. In those years to come the young man human would try many things to quench his desire to live life to the fullest….

He would try kite-flying and running and bonsai cultivation and martial arts and cooking and traveling and yoga and working in a variety of fields….

All the while he never seemed to find the answer to what it was that his heart was truly longing for….

And over time the young man human made and said goodbye to many friends. He said goodbye to the human that was his father when his father went back to the other side. And then eventually he said goodbye to the soul partner he met in college when it became clearer that their time in this life journey had served all the purposes that it was intended to serve.

By now that little boy human had become a middle-aged man….a man who wondered at times why he had ever even bothered to leave his lonely soul status wandering the Universe in time and space, in trade for this VERY human experience that had become even MORE painfully lonely than what he had known on the other side….

And just when he thought he was about to completely break….the middle aged man realized that before you could break…..you needed to crack….and for the first time in his human experience he let the crack happen…..and then suddenly the light came in!

And with that light coming in, the middle aged human man started to re-think all the possibilities. He thought about the many hats he had yet to try to wear in this lifetime like loving listener, and humble helper, and fantastic friend….and father….

And all those things that seemed at one point to be impossible, suddenly seemed possible again. The man opened his mind….and more importantly…..he opened his heart… and sure enough the Universe sent him an opportunity. The Universe sent him an opportunity to re-invent himself and to fulfill a soul contract that had been set in motion hundreds if not thousands of years ago….

His new and true soulmate appeared. His soul tribe began to identify themselves one human….and one spirit at a time. Some of them new souls and some of them souls he had traveled with through time and space before….

And with each passing day the lonely soul/human boy/now becoming an elder man grew more content….more at peace…. less fearful and less lonely than he had ever been before. He tried new things that he had never tried before. He learned from new mentors he had always longed to find before. He began to write more and speak more and have more confidence in sharing his own message and sharing his own story as an inspiration to others to also share theirs….

And then one day, one day very recently he got the message that he had been waiting his entire lifetime to hear. The one that his heart was longing for…..even long before he knew about the longing…

The lonely soul/human boy/growing young man/middle aged wanderer/becoming an elder man got the message that another soul had put in a request to the Universe….

The request to come in to this planet called Earth….and call him Dad!

And so it continued….And once and for all….after many climbs and many falls….the idea of ever being alone completely disappeared for the lonely soul….never to re-appear again…”

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About Jim Herbert

I've been wanting to write my whole life. By age 45 it had amounted to nothing more than a storage locker of half full journals and a lot of unfulfilled dreams. Then Paris in the fall of 2011 happened. It was the catalyst I needed to consistently blog. At first I had a hard time hitting the publish button, but now two blog sites and over 300 posts later I'm hitting my stride. I'm also a budding speech writer. I've recently been heavily involved in the Chicago Storytelling scene and have also won the Chicago Toastmasters Area 66 International Speech Contest. Check out our website at www.emergingintojoy.com for more details about the amazing things that are happening in my life. A book or two are nearing completion. With another Paris trip on tap for Easter of 2015 I can only imagine that there are Infinite Possibilities on the horizon!!!